


Cynosure

by StopLookingHere



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, Eventual Smut, Fluff and Smut, Gen, Gender-Neutral Hange Zoë, Implied Krista Lenz | Historia Reiss/Ymir - Freeform, Implied Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager, Minor Nanaba/Mike Zacharias, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:37:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7153841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopLookingHere/pseuds/StopLookingHere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>definitions for cynosure:<br/>1) something that strongly attracts attention by its brilliance, interest, etc.: the cynosure of all eyes.<br/>2) something serving for guidance or direction.</p><p>a collection of defining points in the development of levi and hange's relationship, based off prompts found online.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. comity

**Author's Note:**

> i'm finally finished with the school year woooo 
> 
> definitions for comity:  
> 1) mutual courtesy; civility.

  * I see you got stood up and I feel bad for you so let’s have a drink



 

“Who’s the lucky lady?”

Maybe it was because he hadn’t seen her yet. He hadn’t seen the girl he was supposed to be meeting yet, so clearly, it might be this girl. But this girl didn’t look like her at all, and he wasn’t really sure if they were a girl at all.

“I mean, seriously. You look really lonely.”

Or, maybe he wasn’t enough. Maybe he wasn’t personable enough, or maybe he didn’t smile enough or use enough emoticons in their texts or say goodbye as heartily as they did on the telephone. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been extremely specific, maybe it was because he wasn’t dressed like he was in his profile picture.

“One whiskey on the rocks, one Fuck Me From Behind.”

Alright, what?

This person who had sat next to him… what the hell did they just say?

“There, knew that’d get some kind of reaction from you. Are you deaf? Or just sad?”

He stared. “Sad.”

“Got stood up?”

The whiskey was the color of amber and burnt his throat, helping him choke down the lump there. “Yeah.”

“Was she pretty?”

He tries not to look at the stranger, but they’re so animated. Their head turns every couple of seconds to watch someone leave and come in, and they’re always moving some kind of body part. He vaguely sees their hair out of the corner of his eye, a wisp coming free from an impossibly messy bun held together by what seems to be a single blue ballpoint pen. “Yeah,” he repeats.

The stranger sits for a moment, taking their concoction and ordering a water on the side. They sip it, very slowly, very quietly.

“Her name was Nanaba.”

His head jerks up to stare at the stranger. “Excuse you?”

The stranger’s got a cocky grin on, their eyes sparkling behind silver rimmed glasses. “Her name was Nanaba, right? Blonde, kind of hard to tell if they’re a boy or a girl, really peaceful face?”

The whiskey’s starting to burn less now. “How would you know that?”

“And… you’re Levi. You’re her date, right?” This stranger keeps getting weirder and weirder. Maybe it’s the drink.

Levi just stares, before finally nodding and turning his head back to his drink. His head’s blank now, all those worries from before gone. He can only stare at the polished bartop, his feet barely visible in the dark, black and white sneakers staring right back up at him.

They sit in silence for a bit, him staring into his drink and them sipping out of a red and white striped straw from the corner of their mouth, staring up at the neon lights above them.

“My name’s Hange.”

It’s a familiar name. A co-worker of Nanaba’s, or something. It was mentioned earlier. “Are you going to keep bothering me, Hange?”

They don’t. They finish their drink and wipe the rim of the glass with their napkin, handing it back to the bartender with a small grin. They fold the napkin and free the pen from their hair, letting it fall freely over their shoulders. It’s a lovely mahogany color under the red lights, and takes his breath away for a moment.

“You can text me. Or call me. I don’t really care which. Nanaba’s pretty, but she’s not your lucky lady. You’ll find her one day. You’re gonna need a really lucky lady for someone like you, though.” Hange winks. _Winks._ They’re crazy.

Their napkin has a lipstick stain from wiping the glass.

Disgusting.


	2. Stymie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stymie:  
> 1) The verb stymie means to obstruct or hinder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish for a bagel smothered in cheap Great Value spreadable cream cheese.

  * I had a bad dream about you so now I’m calling to make sure that you are ok



He’s going through his pockets with clumsy, whiskey-stunted hands when he finds the napkin.

The stranger’s handwriting is neat, unexpectedly neat. It slopes slightly to the right and has small tails at the top, and occasionally loops together despite being so angular. He copies it onto a yellow square and sticks it on the wall next to his bed. It’s a little crooked. He re-sticks it.

He hasn’t checked his phone in a little while. He’s a bit afraid, to be honest. Nanaba must have been emotional or something, so he tries to avoid it. He thinks emotional women are messy. Pains, really.

There’s nothing there but a weather alert for heavy storms when he checks the phone. He should have known. Letting a small vocal tic of irritation pass through his mouth, he sends the number next to his bed a simple “thank you” text. His clumsy body finds itself on the bed, barely finding time to plug in his phone charger before passing out. He’s a dead man, physically and emotionally.

His body still feels clumsy when he wakes up. It’s a little bit ridiculous to him until he remembers why he woke up. There was a storm and a flash of lightning, a flash of mahogany hair and sparkling eyes. Of silver framed glasses, one lens cracked in an intricate spiderweb, the other half-submerged in the mud.

“It’s just a dream, lucky man. I’m right here. Glasses are in sterile solution. They’re fine,” is what he’s told on the phone. It’s three in the morning. Who sterilizes their glasses at three in the morning?

“You’re strange, Hange,” he tells them finally. “Why are you awake?”

They take a moment to reply. The phone moves, and it occurs to him that he’s on speakerphone. “Science stops for no human, Levi. Neither do sleep disorders.”

“Melatonin,” he blurts out.

He can hear their tongue click in the background. “Tried it.”

“Oh.”

“Hey Levi, did my shitty mixed drink have enough of an effect on your memory that you dreamed of me?” They ask after a period of silence. Those periods happen pretty often. He’s comfortable like that. The silence gives him space he didn’t know he needed.

“Goodnight Hange.”

“Goodnight, Levi. Glad to know I’m remarkable.”

Remarkable.

He flips his pillow to the cold side and sleeps, dreamless.


	3. Flub

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flub:  
> 1) verb (used with or without object), flubbed, flubbing.  
> to perform poorly; blunder; bungle:  
> 2) noun  
> a blunder.

  * I put my love letter in your locker by mistake. It was meant for your friend, not you. Can I have it back now?



He didn’t realize he’d screwed up until he was halfway home, idle at the red light. Levi was never one to write sappy letters, so he tried to be extremely careful when it came to this one. Nanaba surely would understand if he wrote a long note apologizing for not being genuine, and expecting too much from her. She’d definitely understand.

He also tried to ignore the lump in his throat and the nagging feeling that he was being rather desperate. This love this was new. This connection that he felt, that someone might actually care about him and his personality for once… he didn’t want that connection to fade out or be severed.

But yes, he didn’t realize he screwed up until it was much too late. He planned to go back to the twenty-four-hour gym the next day late at night, simply because he didn’t plan on communicating with people, and nobody was in the gym at three in the morning except for the self-conscious and graveyard shift workers with the night off. He didn’t plan to go back with a mission.

You see, every single gray locker in the gym tended to look the same. The only difference between lockers was the numbers, blocky black numbering on white background. Some people had written on the lockers with sharpie markers, marking them so they’d remember which one was theirs if they forgot their number. He had left his blank.

And of course, the gym goers didn’t technically have assigned lockers, or even official lockers. It was the same logic as lunch hall logic in school had been: you sat in one place and that was your spot. The same logic as parking spaces at the apartment: you parked in front of your apartment in the same spot every day, and that was your parking spot (until some singular asshole motorcycle took the entire spot).  You used a locker, and that was your locker.

But he screwed up. He didn’t put the letter to Nanaba in 043. He put it in 042, the one next to it, with a little silver sharpie’d doodle of a phallic image next to the number. He’d been distracted by that image.

He just hoped and prayed the person who claimed locker 042 was an understanding night gym goer, or at least realized that the letter wasn’t for them and turned it into the front desk eventually. Maybe it would turn up in the morning. He did put his phone number on it.

The light turned green. He turned onto his street, parked in his spot, and made his way up the stairs to his house. Quietly shut the white door, before checking his phone.

A missed text. Hange. They’d been texting him every morning with a random fact about life or their night thoughts, and it was… okay. It wasn’t quite annoying, but it was kind of comforting in an odd way. They didn’t go out of their way to do it, and sometimes the texts were just one word that summed it up, but it was okay. It became part of his routine. Unwelcome at first, but now, a comfort.

He swore when he saw the text, before turning back, keys still in his hand, and driving back to the gym.

It was now three thirty in the morning and he was absolutely beat. Hange had such a somber look on their face as they handed him the note, slightly crumpled.

“Promise you didn’t read it?” He asks, cursing himself.

They look at him, their eyes narrowed. “I saw Nanaba’s name then yours at the bottom and didn’t bother with the middle bit.”

“Thank you.” He’s not entirely sure why he’s thanking them. For respecting his privacy, maybe? For respecting that he’d screwed up?

“Nanaba’s got cancer, Levi. She liked you, but she found another guy. His name is Mike. She said he knows you. He’s a survivor. He understands her.” Hange’s announcement is blunt and makes him swallow that ever-present lump in his throat, a long-lost longing for one of those cancer-causing sticks in the back of his head.

“Oh,” he can only reply.

“She didn’t want to show up to the date or disappoint you further with that news. It’s why she’s been ignoring you lately. She doesn’t want to hurt you,” they continue.

He bites his lip harder. Hange digs around in their bag for a moment as they walk outside the gym locker-room. Past those glass sliding doors, into the humid summer night air. He wanted nothing more than to get rid of this note at this point. He was glad, no, overjoyed, that it hadn’t reached Nanaba.

Hange handed him a matchbox.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not my usual style to post something regarding a current event at the end of a fic that'll stay up long past said current event, but I wanted to say a note on the recent Orlando shooting. This is an event I feel personally connected to, not only because Orlando is quite close to home for me, but because it is a direct hate crime against the lgbt+ community, which I am a part of and consistently support. Writing Hange as gender-neutral for this brings me quite a bit of enjoyment, and I hope it does for you readers as well. Please take a moment to appreciate that we have a website where we can freely post fics that involve people who fall under the lgbt+ umbrella, for there are places where this is frowned upon. Please take Orlando as a reminder that these places where we can speak freely can be taken away or disrupted in one action. Appreciate what he have here today and cherish it.   
> Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." This was in the context of Great Depression and the rising tensions between countries pre-World War I. Fortunately, it holds true for many other situations aside from the Great Depression. Attend pride festivals. Attend support events for those fallen and injured. Keep posting what makes you happy. SNK is talking a lot about bravery right now in the manga. To me, being brave is to stand fear straight in the face, and be afraid, but still push on forward towards an uncertain future.  
> Thank you.


	4. Insouciant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Definitions for insouciant:  
> 1) free from concern, worry, or anxiety; carefree; nonchalant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sleep disorders are a ~bitch~.   
> also yeah I just shoved a lil implied YumiKuri and Eremika into this gimme a break

  * I accidently fell asleep on your shoulder on the train and now you probably think i’m weird



He hates public transportation. He hates going out in public at crowded places on any given day, but on public transportation, his hatred is especially amplified.  

But he’s comfortable now, and his earbuds are in. He’s forgotten a book and can’t be bothered with reading and listening to music at the same time on his phone, so he’s stuck staring at the people around him on the 5’oclock evening bus.

There’s a young mother in the corner, her jet-black hair draped over her frame to hide the baby suckling from their bosom. Next to her there’s a weary, but determined-faced man with brown hair and green eyes watching the area around her. He’s sure that if anyone dared to speak out against the public dinner, the brown-haired man might just fight them on a bus.

A couple seats over from them sits another couple, two women, one with blonde hair and kind eyes, the other with a darker complexion and a smattering of freckles across her face. The blonde is somehow impossibly small next to her partner, maybe even smaller than Levi himself. He watches as the freckled woman leans down to whisper something in the blonde’s ears, earning a blush from her partner.

He averts his eyes, the lump in his throat suddenly prominent once again.

The other occupants of the bus include an older bald sleeping man who wears well-loved combat boots, a tawny-haired young man who has what Levi can only describe as a resting bitch face, and a barely-adult man with a shaved head and curious eyes.

They’re just about to start moving again when the bus doors are flung open to the sound of someone desperately fumbling with a lanyard to show their bus card. It’s accepted, and they hold onto the side of one of the seats to catch their breath before looking up.

He recognizes the bag before he even sees their face. It’s one of those faux black leather things that festival-goers wear on their back, that aren’t actually very functional as a bag but look better than string bags. It crashes down next to his feet as the owner sits next to him, flashing their always sparkling eyes and cocky grin at him. They say something, and he mentally swears before removing his earbuds and hitting pause.

“Hey Levi, is it okay if I sit here?” Hange repeats. He gives an affirmative. They relax against the uncomfortable seat. Against him. He pretends not to notice.

He looks at them while their eyes are closed, noticing the dark circles under them. They wear their tiredness like an old pair of Chuck Taylors, a dab of makeup the same as a patch in the fabric. Every part of them seems to be giving out, from the frayed edge of their button-down shirt collar to the hole in the knee of their jeans.

Levi stops staring when their head droops down to the side, onto his shoulder. He pretends not to notice.

The bus ride is mostly quiet. He doesn’t feel the need to put his earbuds in. No, not when it’s clearly so loud in his head already.

Because really, Hange’s attractive. Not attractive in the blonde hair, blue eyes way that Nanaba had been. Hange’s too tall, too thrown together, too eccentric. He’s pretty sure that they haven’t washed their hair in three days and they look absolutely dead right now, passed out against his shoulder. But in reality, they’re attractive, in a kind of messed up, patchwork way of being attractive.

He’d been sure that Nanaba was perfect, until he’d heard the news. Burning his letter to her felt like he burnt their history. He was a little pissed about Mike taking her, but it was okay. His best mate would appreciate her more than he would. And besides, he didn’t _take_ her. Mike was just a better match.

Hange knew about everything before he did, though. He wondered how they everything before him, about everything else he didn’t know about. He made a mental note to ask once they’d woken up.

He was quietly envious of the young parents on the train. Quietly envious of the two women who kept making each other blush, whom he could only assume were lovers. He was even envious of the standalone people on this bus. They all left in trickles, at their respective stops.

Levi knew where Hange lived because they never bothered to take the location finder option off of their texts. Really, they were just a block down, a distance he didn’t mind walking in order to get them home safe. Their stop came too quickly, and he made quick work of picking up the significantly larger body next to him and their bag before carefully exiting the bus and walking over to their apartment.

Their key was on their lanyard. He let himself in easily, depositing his friend (friend? When did he start to call Hange a friend?) onto the couch before turning on one of the lamps.

Hange’s apartment was about as mismatched as they were; the couch was a red-plaid-flannel thing, the lampshade had embroidery on the bottom that he swore was a repeating pattern of goats, and there were about four candles within view that were in various stages of burnt and smell.

They stirred on the couch, blearily opening their eyes to stare around them.

“Where are your blankets?” He asks somewhat awkwardly.

Hange stares for a moment at him. “I fell asleep on you. Shit, that’s weird. Sorry I fell asleep on you. _Shit.”_

He doesn’t answer that one. He just repeats his question. Hange tells him to get the duvet from their bed.

Hange’s room isn’t as dark as the rest of their house. It’s got one big window where the setting sun shines through, illuminating the place in a warm haze. It’s kind of messy in here, but it’s what he’s expected from them. A big bulletin board sits over a desk with papers strewn over it, papers tacked over other papers. Several band posters sit on their wall, occupying the empty white space. Their duvet is the only minimalist thing in the room, a heavy fluffy down thing with a striped blue cover on it.

He drags it out. They’re already mostly asleep on the couch again, their eyes just barely visible through a slit. He burritos them in, pausing over their head.

He takes the elastic out of their hair. “It wasn’t weird at all. I’m glad to see you get some sleep. Do you have work tomorrow?”

“No,” they mumble.

“Okay. I’m going home then. Call me if you need anything,” he says, standing up straight to leave.

“Thank you Le-“ Hange’s yawn is long. “Levi. Thank you a lot. It’s been… awhile since someone’s been… nice.” They’re fading fast.

Levi feels the corners of his mouth upturn, almost rustily. “Anytime.”


	5. Nonpareil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Definitions for nonpareil:  
> 1) a small pellet of colored sugar for decorating candy, cake, and cookies.  
> 2) a flat, round, bite-sized piece of chocolate covered with this sugar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> game of thrones is really good y'all

  * You’ve got some chocolate on the side of your lip, but I’m not sure if I wanna tell you because you look so cute.



 

He doesn’t know precisely how he ends up a dressed up in his formal clothing, sitting across from someone who probably isn’t precise on how they ended up here either, eating pasta and chocolate cake in low lighting with soft jazz music roughly three weeks after that fateful encounter on the train.

He’s not precisely sure. It bothers him. For once, he’s able to put his discomfort aside.

Hange’s someone who he’s quietly figuring out. Or, he thinks, because every day they seem to be one step ahead of him when it comes to figuring each other out. Either way, he’s figured out how they function, at least a little.

Every night Hange sits and makes a list. On that list, they list what happened in their day. On the back of it, they list tomorrow’s tasks. And then they reward themselves based on the amount of things they’ve managed to come up with to do and what they’ve achieved in the previous hours. The more they’ve done, the better the reward they get.

Usually it’s chocolate. Levi’s not too terribly huge on chocolate, and mostly prefers the specialty dark bars, but Hange will eat almost any kind. Hange has a weak spot for the caramel filled squares that he likes to leave in their mailbox on the way to work, where he knows that they’ll check before they leave, so they won’t melt all over the place.

It’s still chocolate. They eat garlic sautéed shrimp on pasta in sauce that slid down your throat like a swallowed hard candy. They both agreed on a bottle of cheap white wine and sat pleasantly warm, if not already warmed by the atmosphere of this place. The chocolate cake was an added bonus of the coupon Hange brought with them: two entrées’, two meals, a dessert to share all for a low price.

Hange chose chocolate cake for the desert. They seemed to be enjoying it more than he did, but that was okay. It was kind of an attack on chocolate to start with.

He decided to be daring. His fork met their lips, making their eyes widen as he fed them chocolate cake. A little remained on their lips. He melted faster than the cocoa-based substance itself.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Did I get chocolate down my shirt?” they ask, rushing to check. They wore an emerald colored vest over white shirt for the occasion, and don’t want to get a single spot on it.

They frown. “Seriously. What are you looking at?”

He lets out a couple extra puffs of air, a half-attempt at a laugh. “You have chocolate on your mouth. It’s so cute, I’m sorry. I have to stare.”

Hange smirks, taking their fork and guiding cake into his mouth. Or, what he thought was into their mouth, because they take special care to spread chocolate icing around his lips even further than what he’s done to them.

“There. Now you’re cute too.”


	6. Achromic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Achromic:  
> adjective; 1. colorless; without coloring matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fluffier than the fucking duvet!

  * I washed your blanket so it’s extra warm and fluffy and I made you tea and I brought you my kitty and we can sit in silence for a couple hours if that’s what you need AU



“The world’s gray, Levi Ackerman. And yes, I’ve slept. But it’s all gray and there’s no rain coming down.”

Hange has had sad days before. They’ve had what they call “gray days,” where everything is bland and he can’t do much to make them smile. He just brings them chocolate and reading material, and tells them about Carla and Kenny and his school days too.

But this is the first time that the world has been gray, not just the day. He’s not sure what it’s supposed to mean, but he ends up at Hange’s apartment on a cold Tuesday night one in the morning in his navy blue pajamas with a box of tea, entirely oblivious to the world outside of Hange Zoe.

They left the door unlocked, maybe for him, but maybe because they’re forgetful like that. The apartment is dark when he comes in, and he figures that they’re in the bedroom so he almost misses them when he walks past the couch.

“Jeez Hange,” he mutters, fumbling with the lamp to turn it on. The room’s bathed in warm yellow light, revealing Hange with hair that resembled a haystack sitting in the middle of that plaid couch. They’re staring ahead blankly, and he thinks they might even have fell asleep with their eyes open until they suddenly move their head, their eyes not moving a minute amount when they see he’s here.

It crushes him to see them like this, sending pangs through his chest and making him feel like he’s disconnected from his body.

“Hange,” he sets down the tea box on the kitchen table. “What can I do?”

They don’t answer. They just keep staring. He sees the edge of their phone screen light up under the couch. They dropped it, he thinks.

He does the only thing he knows what to do when he’s sad. He makes his way through their dark kitchen, finding two mugs and sugar and heating water, adding leaves and letting the mugs cool slightly before giving one to Hange. They grip it firmly, wrapping both hands around the white stone and sipping from it. If they had their glasses on, the steam might have fogged them.

He makes his way upstairs with his phone light, taking the heavy duvet from Hange’s bed and dragging it downstairs.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells them from behind a mound of fluff. “Ten minutes. You can have my tea too.” They still don’t respond. There’s change in the tray next to the door. He takes a couple quarters.

The apartment has coin-operated washers and dryers in the basement, so he takes advantage of the cheap machines and shoves the duvet in one of the dryers, depositing seventy-five cents. He sits on one of the hard benches in front of it, the laundry room somewhat nostalgic of a locker room.

A familiarly pitched voice jerks him out of a five-minute power nap. It belongs to a woman who has straw-colored hair and cool blue eyes.

“Hange’s duvet,” she says. She doesn’t say Levi’s name.

He opens his eyes. She’s standing in front of him, studying him intently, her hair just slightly too crooked to pass as natural.

One minute he’s staring at a woman who made him doubt his self-worth, the next moment he’s hugging her tall frame, her arms constricting around his chest and shoulders. They’re silent. He’s forgotten how tall she said she was.

“I’m so sorry,” is all he can say at first. They separate, her awkwardly going to load the dryer with her clothing.

And then, a memory. “Mike was my best mate in middle and high school, Nanaba. He’ll treat you well.”

She pauses. “And if he doesn’t?”

He licks his teeth inside his mouth. “He’s bigger than me, but I was always stronger.”

Nanaba relaxes a little. “Treat Hange well.”

“And if I don’t?” He can’t help parrot.

She turns to face him. “That’s not an option, Ackerman. It’s an order.”

The dryer buzzes. He grabs the duvet from it, warm and soft. “She said that the world’s gray today. What do I do?”

Nanaba sighs, suddenly looking much more tired than she originally presented. “You can’t do much. For as long as I’ve known them, there’s no real cause to that. They have their gray days, y’know, and it’s usually possible to get them out of those days. But I never have been able.”

It doesn’t make much sense, but it makes perfect sense. He nods, thanks Nanaba, and makes his way up the stairwell back to Hange’s apartment.

He lets himself in again, where Hange is missing from the couch, both cups of tea empty. They wander into the room not a moment after he enters, still looking just as disheveled as when he first saw them. They sit on the couch again.

Levi dumps the duvet on them, gracefulness an absent virtue, turning them into a human burrito with a duvet tortilla. They still stare. He takes the mugs to the kitchen, refilling them with another cup of hot tea.

And then, he realizes something. He crosses the room to sit next to Hange, their frame seeming somewhat smaller in this state. And he lays there, his head on their shoulder, his arm around them, and admits, “I have no idea what to do with you.”

Hange doesn’t answer. He doesn’t expect them to.

“I have no idea what to do with you, but I do know you smell nice, even if you haven’t bathed in a while,” he continues. “And I do know that I care very much about you.”

It’s the closest he’s gotten to giving a shit about something in a long time, that’s for certain. That word is on the tip of his tongue, the one he knows he can use to describe this feeling. But it’s not fair, no, it’s not fair to tell Hange when they’re like this.

When he wakes up in the morning, his slumber interrupted by the early morning rays of sun shining directly in his eyeballs, Hange’s already awake next to him. They haven’t moved much.

“Levi?” They ask, their voice somewhat deeper from a lack of use. He nods.

Hange’s voice lowers to a whisper. “Thank you for making the world colorful again.”


	7. Efflorescence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Efflorescence:  
> noun; 1. the state or a period of flowering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehehehehehehehehehehehe   
> I hope you guys headcanon bisexual levi because hooooo boy   
> also everclear is a slight headnod to Sa, lol. go read consultinghulagirl 's stuff.

  * "I have something that people spend their entire lives searching for and I'm scared shitless"



It’s Hange who appears at his apartment this time. He didn’t even know that they knew where he lived, let alone that they could get in without a key. They sit on the oversized couch in front of the TV, sinking into the worn brown leather. It’s almost like they belong here. If he hadn’t noticed that the door was unlocked, he probably would have missed them at first.

“Zoe,” it’s not often he calls them by their first name. Still, he figures it’ll get their attention. It does. “How did you get in?”

They sit up, coming from the comfort pit known as his couch. Man, Levi loves that couch. It was an estate sale snag, a hundred bucks. It had served him in the basement where he grew up since he was seventeen, through his college years and even now to his bachelor days, where it still remained a homey place to crash, cry, and sleep.

“Oluo,” he hears, the top of their ponytail just barely visible over the back of the couch. He should have known.

“I gotta tell him not to let random troublemakers into my apartment without texting me first,” Levi grumbled. “That’s the emergency key, you know.”

Hange laughs. “I’m here on an emergency. Do you know what the emergency is?”

He stares around him, setting down his work bag and surveying the apartment. “I’m afraid I don’t. It doesn’t seem too urgent, either, if you’ve fallen on the couch.”

His friend snaps up suddenly, crossing the room in half the time that his short legs can. “The emergency is in my head,” they grip his shoulders momentarily before disappearing into the kitchen. He hears the familiar sound of the liquor cabinet opening.

“Hange,” he calls out, feeling suddenly much more tired than normal. He collapses on the couch, feeling the still-warm leather envelope him. “Does this have to do with the gray world thing last week?”

They return with two glasses of amber liquid and the bottle, sitting down next to him neatly. “Kind of.”

He doesn’t want the whiskey, but takes a sip anyway. “What’s up, Shitty Glasses?”

Hange smiles wryly. “I’m in a predicament. Would you like to hear it?”

After a nod, they continue. “This predicament is one that I’ve never been in before. You see, it seems that despite the fact that I break into his apartment and befriend him over shitty mixed drinks, and he doesn’t even know if I’m a boy or a girl or what, I’ve still met someone who will give me anything I ask for. And that, my dear friend, is something that absolutely terrifies me.”

Another sip, and Levi turns to stare Hange square in the face. Behind their silver-framed glasses, there’s a certain degree of panic in the eyes he so loves to stare into.

“Can I kiss you?” That was _not_ what he meant to say.

They’re whispering again, as if speaking loudly might break the spell cast by their outburst. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to be afraid. I don’t care what gender you are, or if you have one. I don’t care that you’re here without telling me, and I definitely have limits on what I can give you,” he replies.

Their eyes are somehow even more glittery than usual, shining bright in the light of the setting sun. “You can kiss me.”

The last time Levi kissed someone, he was the drunkest he’d ever known and playing some sadistic version of spin the bottle featuring Everclear. It’d been sloppy and he barely remembered the guy, except that he wiped his lips on the back of his hand afterward and said something exceedingly homophobic.

No, this kiss wasn’t like that. It reminded him of his first, a sneaky moment at freshman homecoming with some blonde he didn’t know the name of, clumsy and awkward but memorable enough to make his lips tingle for the rest of the night. Hange wasn’t fantastic and neither was he, but that was okay, because their lips were soft and they tasted like alcohol and grilled cheese and their hair felt ever so soft and he swore, in that moment, and the moments afterward where they did it again and again, he was pure light.


	8. Impavid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (im-PAV-id): adj. from Latin impravidus, from in- (not) and pavidus (fearful): not afraid; fearless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woah okay so I went through a small period of feeling like utter crap but I'm working on figuring out all my writing stuff again, so here's a 1.5k chapter to help cushion the fact that I essentially haven't updated all month. There are about five or six more chapters of this left!

_Person B is sick; Person A must comfort them._

 

Levi Ackerman does not get sick. He does not get colds, nor does he get hungover, and he definitely never gets flus. It’s definitely a surprise when he wakes up one brisk November morning feeling like he’s just had the life beaten out of him.

 _Don’t come over, I’m sick_ is his first text to Hange. It’s the only thing he feels remotely even capable of doing at this point, for his mouth feels like cotton and he can feel the dull ache at the back of his throat that warns of the pain to come upon drinking water. Hange doesn’t respond with anything important, just a simple one-letter _K_ to show they’re not ignoring him.

He sighs, grudgingly admitting to himself that he’s got a cold, and kissing Hange while they suffered through a mild one last week was probably one of his more careless ideas. Going outside on Halloween dressed up as Gatsby and a dapper Daisy while the air was suspiciously chilly and then gorging on candy was also a careless idea, but it was fun, so therefore it wasn’t as careless as kissing them was. It seems like he’s gotten a worse one than they had last week though, because they didn’t seem to feel half as dead as he does right now. The air outside his bedroom is colder than usual, so he grabs the plaid robe Hange’s bought him (which he swore he’d never wear) and trudges across the house for a strong cup of black tea.

The tea scalds his throat as usual, sending the already suffering passageway into such a state of pain that he nearly breaks his mug when he throws it down to grasp his neck. That _hurts_ , a lot more than usual. He resorts to sipping it, tying the robe tighter around his waist and hobbling to the front door to collect the daily paper on the ground floor. He’s happy to see the elevator, one of the main reasons for him to move into such a small flat, is being trusty as ever as it takes him down.

Headlines scream at him and he wishes they’d shut up, because his eyes are too bleary and the lights of the tiny lobby are much too bright for his tastes. He’s tempted to grab one of those overpriced bottles of coke from the vending machine because that kind of stuff always felt good on his throat when he was in middle school and still got colds, but alas, he’s forgotten his change. The only reason he has a paper guaranteed for him is because Nanaba's a dear sweetheart and buys him one when he doesn’t beat her to it first. After some awkward couple weeks, they finally got in contact again and began to sort out a tentative friendship, based on newspapers and often wild predictions on the mostly unpredictable weather outside.

Speaking of Nanaba, the elevator dings behind him after he’s done scanning the pages for anything that immediately piques his interest. She looks like she’s ready to go out; nice jeans, a pretty top, smoked out eyes. It’s only then that he realizes it’s not morning.

“Levi! You’re up late. Is everything okay?” She asks him, rushing over to grab is arm. “You’re so pale.”

“Sick,” he tries to say, but his voice is hoarse and small.

 Nanaba nods in understanding, stepping away from him and bowing her head. “I don’t want to get what you have if you’ve only just gotten up at one in the afternoon. You’re an early bird too… please call me if you need anything from the store. I’ll bring it up as soon as I can.”

He hates to ask, but “cold medicine” escapes his lips faster than he can think. He needs a good dose of the stuff, too.

Nanaba writes a reminder in her phone to stop by the store. “I gotcha, don’t worry. By the way, how’s Hange? We ran into each other at the supermarket the other day, she said she was getting over a cold too…”

“They,” Levi corrects, swallowing with some difficulty. “I got their cold, but it’s worse. They’re doing better now, though.”

Nanaba's eyes widen with sudden realization. “Oh no, please tell them I didn’t realize… tell them I’m sorry for calling them ‘she’ this entire time. They looked so off-put the other day and I couldn’t place why.”

“Gets it all the time,” he mumbles. “I’m going back up, to try and get some sleep. Thanks for the paper, Petra.”

She grins. “It’s no problem. Get some sleep and feel better, Levi.”

He nods and reads the paper on the way back up to his flat, the elevator making his stomach drop as usual. The apartment is dark, but he likes it like that right now, at least while his eyes are so sensitive. His tea’s a decent temperature to drink now, but it still pains him, so he drinks it sip by sip.

Hange hasn’t texted him anything more, so he assumes they’re out on some work mission today. They do that often, where their boss sends them out to go collect samples of water from the bay and run tests on them for water health, for example. The last mission had been to test the artificial lakes at the new housing developments just outside of town to make sure they were healthy enough for fish and other wildlife. Only vaguely satisfied with the lack of activity on their end, he decides to shower.

Hot water never felt so good. He lets it run through his hair, across his face, down his chest in rivulets. He doesn’t soap down, but just sits on his butt in the shower, letting it ease the chills that have wracked his body since waking up. He lets himself close his eyes, feeling drowsiness take over.

The shower ends too soon, and he abandons clothing for the gifted robe. He hates the blue plaid design, but shrugs it on anyways, admitting it’s rather soft and warm despite its appearance. Knowing Hange, that was probably the reason they bought it. He keeps it on as he buries himself under the comforter on his bed, falling asleep in a rather comfortable, yet ungraceful position.

Hange finds him at six thirty in the evening in that same position, except now there’s beads of sweat rolling down his forehead. They’ve never seen him sweat. They didn’t even know it was possible for Levi to sweat. Then again, they’d also questioned if it was even possible for Levi to get sick, and that had been proven true today, so anything was possible at this point.

They carried a stoneware pot of soup with steam escaping from the hole in the lid up to the flat, setting it on the kitchen counter the moment they were able to close the door because it was heavy and hot. It was still dark in the apartment and Levi’s cup of tea sat half-finished, cold in the sink. Clearly he hadn’t done much today.

“Levi,” they shook him awake. “Levi, you have a fever. Wake up, shorty.”

“Told you I’m sick,” he mumbles without opening his eyes. “Fucking hot in here.”

“You have a fever,” Hange repeats. “I’ve brought soup and I found a shopping bag on your door handle. Can I open it?”

“S’probably Nanaba,” he shifts enough to peel the bedcovers from his body. “Cold medicine. Go ahead.”

Hange leaves for a moment, returning with the bag and sitting on the bed next to him. They take a bottle of Nyquil from it and a receipt with a blue ballpoint pen note on the back. “ _Levi,”_ Hange reads. “ _Please don’t worry about paying me back. Don’t forget to tell Hange! You look like death. I hope you feel better soon_. What did you forget to tell me?”

“She misgendered you. She’s sorry about that, didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Levi replies, sitting up to read the back of the Nyquil bottle.

They give a half-laugh, half-sigh. “She’s sweet. She didn’t have to do that. I had makeup on to hide that awful red nose I got from the cold, and figured I might as well have cat eyeliner as well.”

Levi pours out the correct amount of Nyquil into the cap and swallows it straight, wincing at the taste and feeling of liquid on his throat. He hands it to Hange gingerly before getting out of bed to grab some clothing. “Sorry I’m not decent. Robe’s soft.”

“I’m glad to see you wearing it. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be decent when you’re sick,” they reassure him. “I made soup, it’s downstairs. Do you want me to get you a bowl and a cup of tea?”

“Just the soup. Actually, I have a sprite in the back of the fridge, I think,” he answers as he leaves the room.

“Got you,” Hange replies, leaving the note/receipt on his dressing table and heading downstairs. They set the cold medicine on the counter next to the soup and navigate his kitchen until they procure bowls, spoons, and the sprite. By the time Levi makes his way downstairs, he’s shivering again, and looks at the bowl of steaming chicken noodle soup with the eyes of a man who might just bow at the feet of the creator of such a glorious thing.

“Hey Hange,” he says after eating about half the bowl in silence. “Thank you.”

They merely just smile at him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW! This is the smut chapter. :-)
> 
> It should be noted that I kept this as vague as possible to avoid giving Hange a gender. I mention that they wear a binder in the beginning, and I realize this can imply that they're physically female. If you view Hange as physically a female, great; if you view Hange as physically a male, consider that they canonically try to dress as androgynous as possible- perhaps Hange has large pecs that can be mistaken for small breasts, and would rather bind. And, if you don't have a gender headcanon for Hange at all, maybe they're just more comfortable in a binder regardless of their gender! It's entirely up to your interpretation.  
> Also: it's a lot harder to write a smut scene without genders. This was a challenge, but it was a fun challenge. I hope I've done it justice.

The prompt for this is, “I wanted to write something that involved Levihan and pegging and this happened.”

 

The holidays come and pass blissfully with Hange around. Levi can’t remember the last time he’s felt this happy, or the last time he got a feeling even vaguely resembling holiday cheer in his head. Growing up with Kenny as a somewhat absent stand-in-father, the closest thing he’d ever gotten to a Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner was the school lunch before the two-week long break in between. Hange’s dinner of a small roast chicken (and then a ham, too) and homemade decorations that were admittedly a bit lopsided, but still very cute, filled him with a warmth so foreign, yet so familiar.

He finds himself at Hange’s apartment more and more as the days pass from winter to spring. For some reason, his almost sterile box of an apartment no longer gave him the same level of peace as it used to when he came home from work. Instead, it was Hange’s mostly messy, definitely questionable, and absolutely comfortable living space that he spent most of his time. He even has a drawer in their dresser now, and a meager tea collection growing in the kitchen cabinet above the toaster.

Levi doesn’t propose the idea of sex to Hange in an exactly clear manner. It’s been in his head for a little while now, in the shower when his partner’s finally crashed and asleep, or when their bodies are tangled and frustrated. He doesn’t even really propose it at all; it just kind of happens, like everything else in their relationship.

It’s actually Hange who proposes it. There’s been some strategic calling in sick on Levi’s part admittedly, and Hange’s newest project is thankfully one that doesn’t require a ton of observations in the early stages (see: sprouting a new type of genetically modified tomatoes), so they’ve both taken the day off for… whatever reasons, really. Levi didn’t particularly want to go out anywhere, and Hange was content with merely spending the day around him. They ended up curling up in Hange’s monochrome bed, some terrible romance movie on the laptop at the food of the bed and a significant lack of eyes on the screen. Lounging in sweatpants without shirts (though Hange had gone for their “unsexy” gray binder as they called it, to which Levi shrugged at) felt great, and it felt even better when his lips were glued to theirs and his hands were tangled in their hair.

And Hange doesn’t exactly propose it traditionally either; they just kind of stick their hands down his sweatpants at one point, catching him by surprise, but really he kind of deserved it because his hands had been travelling too. Regardless, it makes him pause.

“You good with this?” Hange asks him, removing their hand and instead resting it around his side. It fits nicely there, like it’s meant to rest there in times like these.

His voice is a little croaky when he replies, mostly from the lack of a full breath when he’s kissing Hange. “I’m good. Are you good with this?”

Their response comes in the form of snaking their hand down his sweatpants again, grasping his length a little clumsily. They pump it, making his breath hitch. “I’m great with this,” Hange confirms.

They make quick business of removing the hindrance of his gray sweatpants and enveloping the head of his length in warmth. They’re hesitant at first, but soon go into it with gusto, even attempting to take him fully in their mouth, but immediately regretting it afterward, with much sputtering. They’re messy and take longer than most to get a rhythm going, but once they do, he can’t even begin to explain what goes through him.

Hange stops just as he’s about to warn them that he’s nearly to the point of no return. They stare at him, a light flush of color across their face, before biting their lip.

“Are you into butt s-stuff?” Their voice cracks halfway through the question, but it makes him throb either way.

Levi sits up, brushing the hair from his partner’s forehead to kiss it. “I’m very into butt stuff.”

It’s only a matter of minutes before Hange’s removed a bottle of lube and other tools from the chest of drawers across the room, and Levi’s on his knees with a finger up his bum and a leaking cock. Hange asks him multiple times if he’s okay with it as they add fingers, scissoring, stretching him out.

Hange fumbles with the condom packet, finally tearing the foil packet open with sweating hands to put it on. They pause, and ask him again if he’s okay with this.

“Hange, you’re nervous.” He doesn’t mean to sound accusatory, but it comes out like that, and it makes him wince to hear the tone of his voice. “Sorry, I don’t mean it like that. It’s okay. Life isn’t like the perfect porn films.” Hange chews on their lip before giving a little nod, their eyes flashing with determination at his encouragement.

They fill him slowly, but easily. Levi takes a few moments to adjust to the length inside him before they’re at it. Hange’s hands are back on his sides, fitting just the way they do, and they’re not exceedingly rough but they aren’t gentle in the slightest. It’s just enough to leave Levi constantly on the edge, panting and groaning with every thrust, a sound that sends electricity through Hange.

At one point he feels them hit his prostate, sending his cock twitching and his fists grasping at the sheets. “Fuck, Hange,” he gasps. They merely give him a low laugh and repeat the motion.

Hange cums first, with one final deep thrust that hits Levi in that sensitive spot deep inside of him and a throaty swear. He follows soon after, the sticky substance spattering onto the sheets below him with one last moan of their name.

They pull out of him, collapsing onto the bed a couple inches to his side so he has room to roll over and lay staring at the ceiling. He turns his head, watching their chest rise and fall as they relax.

“You’re perfect,” he mumbles quite suddenly. They’re not perfect, no, not really. They forget to do their dishes a lot and forget to wash their own body half as much. They’re about as perfect as he is tall, but for some reason, he can’t help it. He knows.

“Am not,” Hange tells him, closing their eyes. Hell, even their eyelashes are perfect. He could sit and stare at them for hours here, even sketch them. His sketch wouldn’t capture it. He could photograph them, and only get a quarter of it.

“That’s true,” he admits. “But I can’t find any other word to describe it.”

“Love,” Hange opens their eyes and turns their head to face his. “I love you, you know that?”

He can’t help the grin that’s so large it feels like his face is going to break. “Yeah, that’s the word. Love. I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ps: sex =/= love.


	10. Denouement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> de·noue·ment  
> ˌdāno͞oˈmäN/Submit  
> noun  
> the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter!

The world moves too fast for them after that. It doesn’t quite happen in a flash and they don’t quite lose touch of each other, but there isn’t much of a strain on them. It’s a kind of fast-paced world now, with the days flashing by in a blur and the nights growing shorter, the days longer, and the time they spend together varied. It’s more that they see each other at a comfortable rate, with time in between to see friends and family and everyone else who they ignored in the first months of their relationship.

Just like neither of them formally asked each other if they could date, neither of them formally asked about a union either. The marriage forms just showed up one day on Levi’s kitchen counter, and given the amount of people who knew where the spare key was to Levi’s apartment at this point, nobody knew where they had come from. At one point, Hange even joked that maybe Mike and Nanaba had left it in here when they popped in earlier that week to bring some sweets. Regardless, both of them denied ever noticing the forms until Hange slid them in front of Levi one day on their day off, making him almost spit his tea.

“Are you trying to say something?” He asked, collecting himself.

They smirked. “I don’t know, are you? I found this. I think we should fill it out.”

He considered it for a moment. “Would you wear a dress, or a suit?”

Hange paused, circling the top of their coffee cup with their index finger. “I’d wear my nice yellow button down and white pants. And knowing you, you’ll wear that cravat and a button down too with your black dress pants and carry a jacket even though it’s hot as hell in the sun right now.”

Levi smirked, taking a long draught from his tea, finishing it. “You know me too well. Let’s see then, when should we go down? It’s a Friday… do you want to just do it today?”

“Why not? I’ll go get dressed after this, and we’ll go down there and get married at the courthouse, and then we’ll go get lunch at that café downtown,” Hange stated, their smile less of a smirk and more of a huge grin now. Levi liked the way the corners of their mouth almost met with their cheeks, giving them an almost chipmunk-y look.

Three hours later, Hange Zoe and Levi Ackerman were legally married, and sharing an extra-large bowl of fettucine alfredo to boot. Neither of them told their family until a week after that, preferring to stay private. Of course, three hours after their lunch they’d both gotten matching rings, and three hours after that, Nanaba walked in the door making screeches so loud that only bats could hear them at their highest frequency.

Three months after their marriage, Nanaba came to Hange’s door in a much quieter manner. It was seven in the evening and Hange had just gotten home, and barely set their work bag down before they heard the doorbell ring. It was curious to them, because any of their friends simply just let themselves in, so who was knocking after hours? Were Levi and them too loud last night and the neighbors were coming to quietly tell them to tone down the moans? Was it the landlord, telling them they had an issue, and they’d have to pay extra that month?

It was neither. Nanaba had simply respected the doorbell for once, and came with good news. She was officially cancer free as of just half an hour before. This time, it was Hange who screamed, scooping their best friend up into a hug so tight that it might just have killed her quicker than cancer ever would have.

Six months later, Levi and Hange moved in together, in a little suburban home still close to the city but still a large leap from apartment living. They celebrated by eating Chinese takeout in their underwear on Hange’s old couch, watching Levi’s old TV, and simply basking in the fact that this was _just for them._

And so, it was done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was discussing this fic with a friend the other night, and I remarked that Levihan has never felt like one of those endgame "get married, have kids, spend time with friends" cycles that we see often with other ships. No, Levi and Hange would have been content to never marry. It just doesn't seem like something that would be a top priority to them.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this fic. Thank you for sticking around!   
> love,  
> rose  
> ♥


End file.
